


Choose Water Over Wine

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Constantine (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:38:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1634420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for jimmy jazz</p>
    </blockquote>





	Choose Water Over Wine

**Author's Note:**

> Written for jimmy jazz

 

 

There are only a few ways to deal when your first name is Francis. Chas has always believed that ignoring it will make it go away and that's worked out well for him. It's when he meets Constantine that he finds out that some things you can't ignore out of existence. John calls him Francis once, the day after they meet, when Chas finds himself suddenly without a mother and his blurry eyes opened to a whole new reality. John tells him that names have power and that his secret is probably the only reason Chas is alive.

Chas never asks how John knew his name and John never volunteers the information. Chas sees a lot of things but he doesn't ever see the ghosts trailing behind them.

Books allow him to make sense of the things he'd seen through John's eyes. Monsters and creatures, awful in their magnificence. When they're summed down to words and phrases, human doubts, they're not half as real. There are times when he wishes he could stop looking and believe in fiction.

It's not something that happens often. A mix of frustration and helplessness. Chas has stopped counting the times he's wanted to disobey an order John gave.

He's only actually done it once, before he learned how to listen. The price he paid made sure he doesn't have to make the promise of ever repeating that mistake.

\---

The second time doesn't really count. John tells him not to do it, but it's weak and he coughs up even more blood trying. It's not really related to anything John knows shit about, so Chas disregards it as an order.

Chas drives too fast and feels like he gets there too late even though he knows it's nothing that can be fixed right away.

He also knows that fucking cough syrup isn't the answer.

\---

Beeman had been the first to warn him off.

"You'll be better off not looking."

"Could you ever stop?"

"Are you two girls done with the heart to heart?"

And that had been that.

\---

Chas isn't a twelve year old girl so he doesn't have crushes. If he has a hard time erasing the mental image of John fucking some guy when Chas came in totally by accident, it doesn't mean a thing.

"Are we going to have to _talk_ about this?" John says the next day.

"No, no, nothing to talk about. Wait, talk about what? I'm totally cool with it, whatever," Chas says. And he isn't even lying. He might be freaking out.

John just smirks.

Chas spends the night reading about Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot was kind of a dickface. It leaves him a little sad, and more than a little angry, and he doesn't, _doesn't_ imagine John doing whatever he's doing as a raised middle finger to the big guy.

He thinks about LA, instead, and can't help but draw parallels.

"Chas Kramer, asshole," he says into the dark.

\---

If you're looking for God, you have to look in every religion and maybe you'll get a hint of truth, but mostly you can just hope for a set of rules in a game you have no chance of winning because the game is fixed.

Chas may be a bit drunk.

"Bullshit," John replies to his theory and doesn't elaborate. Of course.

He pours them both some more wine because they're celebrating. Or at least Chas is. John is always drinking and never really celebrating anything, but tonight they tricked a whole bunch of half-breeds and it's worth getting drunk over it.

Okay, John did the tricking but Chas was totally there. Not even outside waiting in the car, this time.

"But the guy was summoning angels, he wasn't exactly innocent, right?" Chas says.

"Yeah, some John Dee wannabe happened to find relevant texts for opening portals to Hell. No one nudged him in the right direction or anything," John says dryly.

The first important thing Chas learns that John doesn't teach him is that humans can be terrible and evil all on their own. John tends to not believe in that theory.

"Intent," Chas says. "Intent, John. It has to weigh in somewhere."

"Maybe you should get some sleep, kid," he says, pulling him up and dragging him down to a room Chas hasn't ever seen before. It has a bed inside.

When John pushes him on the bed Chas fists a hand in John's shirt and doesn't feel like letting go. John gives him a look.

"I don't feel like letting go," Chas says.

The smile he gets in return if warm and amused, but John's prying his fingers off and Chas falls asleep minutes after.

The next morning he remembers most of the night before they started in on the wine. That came after the whiskey. He doesn't remember getting into a strange bed. His head hurts.

John passes by dressed and ready, yelling something about the time, and Chas wonders for the hundredth time if John Constantine ever sleeps. He also wonders how John makes a living, because Chas is again reminded that he has to get to work because being a slave is obviously his lot in life.

\---

When it happens it's not grand or dramatic, it's just Constantine who's even more tired than usual, the way he always gets when a friend dies. And Chas wants to make it stop, at least for a little while. He's been watching closely enough that he knows how and what to offer John.

Just an escape, an equal exchange, something solid and human.

John doesn't protest, nothing out loud, but he gives Chas all the outs he can imagine.

"It's not like I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart, you know?" Chas says.

"Yeah, I'm getting the feeling that I'm just a notch on a bedpost," John says smirking against Chas' neck. He bites there, and it will leave a mark, but it will never be a marking.

It's good, it's better than. It's a nice memory. Chas doesn't even think of asking for more, just waits behind the wheel and hopes he learns enough to keep himself alive.

.fin.

 


End file.
